Chris Granger / The Times-PicayuneMembers of the investigation team, from left to right, Lt. Robert Butts, Ross Wheatley, and Capt. Hung Nguyen, listen to testimony from Capt. Carl Smith at the Radisson Hotel in Kenner on Wednesday.

The chief mechanic on the Deepwater Horizon testified Wednesday that he was at a planning meeting 11 hours before the rig exploded at which the BP company man overruled drillers from rig owner Transocean and insisted on displacing protective drilling mud from the riser that connected the rig to the oil well.

"I recall a skirmish between the company man, the OIM (offshore installation manager), the tool-pusher and the driller," said Doug Brown, one of 115 rig workers who survived the April 20 disaster. "The driller was outlining what would be taking place, whereupon the company man stood up and said, 'No, we'll be having some changes to that.' It had to do with displacing the riser for later on. The OIM, tool-pusher and driller disagreed with that, but the company man said, 'Well, this is how it's gonna be,' and the tool-pusher, driller and OIM reluctantly agreed."

Brown said the top Transocean man on the rig, the Offshore Installation Manager Jimmy Harrell, spoke in a low grumbling voice as they left the 11 a.m. meeting with BP.

Brown recalled Harrell saying, "Well, I guess that's what we have those pinchers for."

Brown said he assumed Harrell was talking about the shear rams on the blowout preventer, the devices that are supposed to slice through a drill pipe in a last-ditch effort to close off the well in case of an emergency. The implication was that the Transocean employees expected they might have to take emergency action because of BP's push to remove the drilling mud.

But Ned Kohnke, a lawyer for Transocean, cross-examined Brown and questioned who else referred to shear rams as "pinchers," and Brown said he couldn't recall. Brown's lawyer said he'd suffered a head injury in the accident and it affected his memory.

Brown also told the panel details of his harrowing ordeal during the explosions and evacuation of the rig.

"The power went out and we were put in the dark. Right on the end of that was the first explosion. Basically, it threw me up against the control panel and a hole opened underneath me and I fell into it. I was wondering what was happening. I was confused, hurt and dazed. I tried to get up and the second explosion happened. I fell back into the hole and the ceiling caved in on top of me at that point. That's when I heard people screaming, 'I got to get out of here.'"

Capt. Carl Smith's testimony

Before Brown came to the witness stand at the hearings in Kenner, a ship captain with 15 years of drilling experience told the joint investigative panel that he doesn't know why a rig would displace the protective column of heavy mud with light seawater before closing off a well.

"That's something you learn at well-control school," said Capt. Carl Smith, a former Coast Guard captain serving as an expert witness for the panel. "If you're circulating fluid, you need to monitor how much is going in and how much is coming out. If you get more fluid out than in, it's an indicator that something's going on."

Smith testified that there is an inherent conflict on any drilling rig between the company that's leasing the rig and oilfield and the drilling operators. He said the "company man" represents a firm that leases the rig and often pays $500,000 a day to drill for the oil, so is concerned about speed and cost. The crew, meanwhile, is generally more concerned about safety and controlling the well, he said.

"That's a natural point of conflict that I've seen," Smith said. "Some (company men) have become outright adversaries, but they're the people paying the bills. They control helicopters, the boats, what's going on and off the rig. But I have to say, most of them are safety conscious."